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A short visit to Greece

This last few days I was able to flee the approaching bad weather in Vienna and travel to Greece. My first stop was at Aegina, an island only 70 minutes by ferry from Athens. There I visited the famous archeological excavation at Aegina Kolonna and was allowed to take samples from to pieces of pumice found there in 2014 and 2015. I was accompanied by Lydia Berger who not only watched my boring sampling session but also took the time to walk with me through the excavation. It’s always a rare treat to get a personal tour through an excavation by one of the excavators themselves. The samples will be analyzed and hopefully I will be able to find their geochemical fingerprint in our database, finding their origin. The sampling was more challenging than usual since at least one of the two pieces clearly shows traces of its use as an abrasive.

Naturally, I also had a taste of the pistachios that are grown on Aegina, and I made sure to bring some of the pistachio butter back…

Back in Athens I was invited by Prof. Stamatakis to give a talk at the university at the faculty of geology and geoenvironment. Even though I presented at lunch time and during exam week, there were quite a few students and faculty members there. I confess that I ran slightly over time 😂, but still people stayed around for an interesting discussion afterwards.

And since the only reasonable flight I was able to get, I got to stick around in Athens for another day and managed to visit the Acropolis as well as the new museum there, another highlight of this trip!